In this series called Storytellers we are rehearsing again the biblical story with an aim toward becoming more fluent with its message. We started “in the beginning,” where we understand that God formed the world to be a temple, his house in which he would dwell with human beings made in his image, and with whom he would share the administration of his rule. Human rebellion, human sin, is what has caused the whole creation project to derail. God’s call of Abraham and covenant with him is the beginning of the rescue project, the story of redemption. God’s plan of redemption, the Bible makes clear, runs through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom he renames Israel. It is in Israel, through Israel, that God promised to save the world.

When we get to the end of the Old Testament era and arrive at what we now call the first century, we are introduced to Jesus of Nazareth. To understand Jesus, we must not think that the story all of a sudden has been scrapped. Our passage today has to be twisted and turned in all sorts of weird ways unless we remember what the story has been about all along. But if we keep the story straight, then we will be able to see what Jesus is up to when he commands a rich young man to keep the commandments, sell his possessions, and follow Jesus.

Keep the Commandments

First, when asked, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life,” Jesus responded, “If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” Commandment-keeping is a prerequisite for entering the eternal life of God’s kingdom. That’s what Jesus said. Anyone want to challenge Jesus on this?

Understanding the Conversation

So, was Jesus a Pelagian? Did he agree with that 5^th century monk, Pelagius, that people can merit their salvation by their good works apart from God’s grace? Pelagius was excommunicated and his teaching condemned as a heresy by the Council of Carthage, but did Jesus actually agree with him? Was Jesus at least a semi-pelagian who believed that God’s grace met us halfway and that our obedience to God’s laws is what completes the offer of salvation? Perhaps this passage proves at least that Jesus was an Arminian rather than a Calvinist, since, as one Arminian scholar says about this passage,

If everyone, without exception, only gets into the kingdom of God by God’s work alone without any required cooperation on his or her part, then Jesus’ saying makes no sense at all.[1]

Perhaps. Or perhaps our assumptions about some key terms are making us miss the point of this conversation.

What do we suppose this man means by eternal life? Notice that Jesus, in verses 23-24, equates eternal life with the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. The disciples then ask about who can be saved in verse 25, and in verse 28, Jesus speaks of “the new world.”

Eternal life, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, salvation, the new world. Do you think of these as referring to the same basic reality? Is that reality here on earth or someplace else, in “heaven” perhaps?

If we want to understand what is going on here in this conversation between this young man and Jesus, then we need to understand their shared assumptions about what it is they were talking about.

The Coming Kingdom

The central message of Jesus was the announcement that the kingdom of God had arrived. “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (Mk 1:14-15). Notice that when Jesus spoke of the gospel, the good news, he spoke about the good news of the kingdom of God, the good news that it had at long last arrived.

This was the basic message of Jesus. This was the good news he preached, and it is exactly what the story of Israel was waiting to come next. This kingdom of God was the anticipated climax to the Abrahamic covenant. Let’s not miss this. Here’s one scholar’s way of putting it:

The most important thing to recognize about the first-century Jewish use of kingdom-language is that it was bound up with the hopes and expectations of Israel. ‘Kingdom of god’ was not a vague phrase, or a cipher with a general religious aura. It had nothing much, at least in the first instance, to do with what happened to human beings after they died. The reverent periphrasis ‘kingdom of heaven’, so long misunderstood by some Christians to mean ‘a place, namely heaven, where saved souls go to live after death’, meant nothing of the sort in Jesus’ world: it was simply a Jewish way of talking about Israel’s god becoming king.[2]

Israel’s God had, of course, been king before. Look back in Israel’s history and see God’s kingdom, God’s rule, expressed in realities like Israel’s exodus from Egypt or in the conquest of the Promised Land under Joshua. Think of the high points that came in both the Davidic and Solomonic monarchies. Israel’s hope was for God to show his superior strength like that again. The prophets had said such a day would come. God’s covenant with David was God’s own guarantee that such a day would come. When the kingdom of God came, God would make Israel great again.

But this would not just be another cycle of Israel’s superior political might in the world. This promised manifestation of God’s kingdom would be full and final, the climax of Israel’s long history to that point. It would be such a dramatic overturn of the way the world was or had become that the language used to describe such a dramatic moment was with apocalyptic terms.[3] That’s how “eternal life” and “new world” should be taken in this account between Jesus and a certain young man.

To put it as succinctly as possible, “The kingdom means God ruling over his people in the material universe.”[4] Now we see that Jesus is subversive to many professing Christians today, because Jesus said that that long-anticipated moment had now arrived with him while many Christians today (along with many non-believing Jews, of course) still think that day is yet to come.

Getting in on the Kingdom

So the question, “What must I do to have eternal life?” is a question about prerequisites for getting in on this kingdom of God on earth. That much is obvious. But what seems to escape our notice is that the reason Jesus can sound suspiciously like a heretic is because he’s talking about what life in the kingdom of God necessarily looks like.

Let’s frame it this way. Suppose we were asking about what I must do to go to heaven when I die. Surely the answer to that question cannot give us the impression that once I get “in” to heaven, I can go on living there however I want. What must I “do to go to heaven” cannot be answered in a way that sounds as if all that matters is “getting in” without any consideration about what is expected of you once you are there. Maybe part of the problem is that we don’t think God would expect anything from us once we made it into heaven. But the anticipation of the biblical story is the kingdom of God, a new world with all its new opportunities and expectations, and, so yes, new demands as well.

Sell Your Possessions

That’s how we should approach what Jesus says next in answer to this man’s question. “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor.” Why does Jesus imply that this man must sell his possessions to “have eternal life”? Because to be in the kingdom of God means he has a role to play as one of this kingdom’s citizens. For this man, Jesus says, his role would require him to liquidate his assets and give them to the poor.

If You Would Be Perfect

When we hear the word perfect, we often think of sinless perfection. But that makes no sense in this dialogue. That this man was not sinlessly perfect, and consequently, was in need of forgiveness, was a given. Keeping the commandments would mean keeping those commandments which had to do with the sacrifices and ceremonies which were designed to deal with sins. Of course, only Jesus by his own death on the cross would be able to put away sins once for all.

The kingdom can only arrive when Israel’s sins that sent them into exile in the first place were finally dealt with. To be forgiven of sins is of course a prerequisite for the kingdom of God. But the reason why God deals with sins is so that his glory (the image of God) can be fully restored in us, that glory that has been compromised by sin. And you can’t have one without the other. There is no forgiveness of sins if there is not also the restoration of God’s glory in the sinner who has been forgiven. No wonder then, that Paul could say, “Are you crazy?” to the supposition that a Christian, having been forgiven of sin, could “continue in sin that grace may abound.” His answer is important here.

How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (Rom 6:2-4)

So, when Jesus says, “If you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor,” he is not espousing a “works-based salvation.” He is saying that the kind of people who will populate the kingdom is an important concern.

The Heart of the Matter

In giving this prerequisite, selling his possessions, to this young man, Jesus is doing what some employers do when they give the prerequisites for a certain employment. There may be skills you have to have to even be considered for the job. That’s one kind of prerequisite. But there may be prerequisites of another kind. Perhaps you have to “work well in a fast-paced environment” or “be a self-starter” or “a quick learner.” Prerequisites like this have more to do with the kind of person you are or are at least becoming, and they are closer to expectations once you are in the job than they are conditions you have to meet to get the job.

Jesus does not tell this man to sell his possessions because he can’t get into the kingdom of God if he has a penny left to his name. As everyone recognizes, he tells this man this because he knew that this man “had made a god of his wealth, and when faced with the challenge he could not forsake that god.”[5] And to allow citizens of the kingdom to go on worshipping idols would be to turn the kingdom of heaven into the kingdom of hell.

Life in the Kingdom

So the man “went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions” (v. 22). Sorrow seems to be a strange emotion for this man at this point. He didn’t go away mad, but sad. He apparently didn’t disagree with Jesus, either. He went away sad because he knew this answer meant he would not qualify for the kingdom of God. He wouldn’t qualify because he didn’t have the right heart, the right desires. When he saw what this kingdom would be like, he concluded it wasn’t for him.

What he thought that might mean for his eternal destiny, we don’t know. That’s not the point of the conversation. If we make it the point, then we will misread what is going on here. The question is not about how we might convince God to “let us in” to his house, as if God is hard-hearted and has to be persuaded to share his bounty with anyone, especially with “such a worm as I.” God knows us well. Sinners? Well, of course. But being a sinner does not make God less willing “to let us in” than if we were not sinners. He wants us in. He does not cast out anyone who comes to him. “Whosoever will may come.”

So God will not greet us at the moment of our death and say, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” as if he were not inclined to let riff-raff like us into his meticulous mansion. It isn’t God who has to be persuaded to let us in to his kingdom. It is we who have to be persuaded to come.

Jesus is saying that if you want to be in on the kingdom of God that he was bringing to realization, you have to take it quite seriously. You can’t be flippant about this. Anyone can enter the kingdom of God. But that doesn’t mean that everyone would be happy to be there.

And that means that for some people at least, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle” than for them to enter the kingdom of God (v. 24).

Jesus said this was the case “for a rich person” no doubt because he knew how tight a grip a person’s possessions can have on their heart. Jesus’s words continue to confront and convict all of us who live in the affluent West. If we take them seriously, we should here be asking, along with Jesus’s disciples, “Who then can be saved?” If this young man, who was obviously devout (“all these [commandments] I have kept”) and sincere (“what do I still lack”) and whose great wealth would have seemed to many to have been a sign of God’s blessing,[6] if it was virtually impossible for him to enter the kingdom of God, well, “who then can be saved?”

Follow Me

That question is not left unanswered in our passage. But the answer to the question is found in something Jesus has already said. Not only did he tell the young man to keep the commandments and to sell his possessions and give them to the poor. He also said, “Come, follow me.” It is only as a disciple of Jesus that a person can truly be saved.

Possible with Jesus

“With God all things are possible,” Jesus said. God can take a person who would never qualify for the kingdom of God and turn them into the ideal citizen. And the way he does that is in discipleship to Jesus. It is with Jesus that the long-awaited kingdom of God had arrived. It is with Jesus, by following Jesus, that his disciples would somehow find the commandments of God’s kingdom fulfilled in them (see Rom 8:3-4). Notice what a startling claim Jesus is here making.

In the most radical way imaginable, Jesus . . . presented himself and his message as a story about an alternative order of reality that . . . was being accomplished through his work. And his telling of that story was designed to invite his hearers to give up their controlling metanarratives and trust him for his. . . . [In other words], he told them to repent and believe in him.[7]

And by doing so, things which seemed impossible would in fact be possible. That’s still true today, but only as we follow Jesus and his way and give up on so much of what makes sense to us about our own way.

Jesus is not afraid to incentivize the call of discipleship to him. When Peter asked, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus answered him with the promise of sitting on a throne and “judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Indeed, Jesus said, “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (v. 29). The proper motivation for being a Christian is not because of what you can avoid by not being one but because of what you gain by being one.

A Taste of the Kingdom

Still, it’s not so easy. “Many who are first will be last, and the last first,” verse 30 says, and then Jesus told a story about what the kingdom of heaven is like.

The parable found here in chapter 20 is clearly meant to illustrate this point that “the last will be first, and the first last,” since it ends with those words again in verse 16. The story is supposed to make us cry out, “Unfair!” with those workers who had worked all day for an agreed upon wage, only to find that those who had worked for just the last hour of the day had been paid the same amount.

Of course, the employer had given what he promised to the day laborers. He had not been unfair to them. The problem only comes because he had been wildly generous with the ones who had worked only a fraction of the time that the others had been working. And the problem is that this wild generosity caused resentment in the workers who had been there all day.

The story is about the subversive reality of the kingdom of God, which turns so many things we expect about the world as we know it upside down. Those who had worked all day were privileged to have had a job, while others had been left unemployed. But when the end of the day had come, it was those who had been left unemployed most of the day who rejoiced while the employed left, like the young man in the previous chapter, sad, annoyed, grumbling.

Brothers and sisters, where do we see ourselves in this parable?

The Demand of Discipleship

If Jesus has brought the reality of God’s future kingdom rule already into the present, then the joyful invitation of God is to enter this kingdom reality by being a disciple of Jesus. And being a disciple of Jesus is not merely knowing the right answers about Jesus; it is about believing those answers and putting them into practice in our lives.

Come, follow me.

That is what the gospel story demands.

Craig Keener, commenting on this passage says,

When we tell prospective disciples today, “Just ask Jesus to forgive your sins and you can go to heaven,” we are not telling the whole truth of the gospel. Jesus is available for the asking, but accepting Jesus means accepting the reign of God and God’s right to determine what we do with our lives.[8]

Not your pastors’ right to determine what to do with your life. Our job is to keep pointing to Jesus and say, “Follow him!”

But Jesus’s way will lead us toward a subversion of so much of what we have come to expect as normal. He will lead us into the lavish richness and generosity of the kingdom of God. And not everyone will be happy about that. Dallas Willard writes,

I often wonder how happy and useful some of the fearful, bitter, lust-ridden, hate-filled Christians I have seen involved in church or family or neighborhood or political battles would be if they were forced to live forever in the unrestrained fullness of the reality of God . . . and with multitudes of beings really like him.[9]

Did Jesus really bring the kingdom of God into reality? Then it is time for those who say they believe him to truly follow him into that kingdom reality.

Make no mistake. Such a life of discipleship will not sit well with the powers of darkness, the kingdoms of men of whichever party or alliance or coalition you can think of. The life of Christ is subversive to all earthly powers.

If that’s true, then we are not surprised to find where Jesus ended up, in a conflict with those earthly powers, and in an apparent defeat on a cross. But that’s the way of the kingdom.

Are we willing to follow him there?

_____

[1] Roger E. Olson, Against Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 165.

[2] N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 2 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1996), 202-203.

[3] Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 209.

[4] Graeme Goldsworthy, cited in Peter John Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 650.

[5] Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Commentary, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1992), 492.

[6] See Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 302.

[7] Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 316.

[8] Craig S. Keener, Matthew, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, ed. Grant R. Osborne, Logos Bible Software electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), n.p.

[9] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), 302.